Iran Press/ Asia: US officials announced (Feb. 2) that the United States was tracking a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that had been spotted over the country's airspace for several days.
The Chinese balloon first spotted over Montana and then shot down off the East Coast over the weekend — has been an issue that again inflamed tensions between Washington and Beijing and reignited calls for the US to take a more aggressive approach toward dealing with China.
Finally, on Saturday evening, February 4 , the US military shot down the Chinese balloon with an F-22 fighter jet off the coast of Carolina, this has led to increasing the tension between Washington and Beijing.
Beijing has dismissed American accusations that a downed Chinese balloon was part of an extensive surveillance program, saying the comments ammounted to "information warfare against China."
At Thursday's daily briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning repeated China’s insistence that the large unmanned balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that had accidentally blown off course and that the US had “overreacted" by shooting it down.
In response to reports published by the United States and Japan that the balloon seen in the American sky is only one of Beijing's fleet of balloons in different continents; also, the spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized the way the United States handled this issue.
Mao said: "Regarding the balloon issue, the Chinese side has shared its information many times."
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